The UFC
142 undercard earned an average of 880,000 viewers last
Saturday on FX, an industry source told Sherdog.com on
Wednesday.

The broadcast marked the UFC’s inaugural prelims special on the
Fox-owned cable station. The figure falls short of all “Prelims
Live” showings on Spike TV, the UFC’s longtime broadcast partner
prior to the organization signing a seven-year deal with Fox
Networks in August. The UFC’s smallest viewership average for a
prelims special on Spike TV occurred with UFC
136, which earned just over 1 million average viewers in
October.

While falling short of its showings on Spike, the UFC’s most recent
effort did eclipse all viewership figures for the series when
broadcast on Ion Television. The greatest viewership for a UFC
broadcast on Ion took place at UFC
125 over one year ago; the airing brought in an average of
829,000 observers.

UFC 142 took place Jan. 14 at HSBC Arena in Rio de Janeiro and was
headlined by a successful featherweight title defense by Jose Aldo
against Chad Mendes. The two-hour FX prelims special featured four
contests in which Thiago Tavares, Gabriel Gonzaga, Iuri Alcantara
and Mike Pyle earned wins over Sam Stout, Ednaldo Oliveira,
Michihiro Omigawa and Ricardo Funch, respectively.

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